“It is the same,” she cried, in awful tones. “I remember him—the dark foreigner. He wandered up here from the port a week ago; and I took him in to the master, and he never came out again. I thought he had let him go by the door there into the lane. O, woe on this fearful house! Long have I suspected and long dreaded. The sounds, and the awful, awful smells!”
“Perhaps,” whispered the girl, gulping, and clutching at her breast, “he died unexpectedly, and uncle put him away here, and forgot all about him.”
Mrs. Gaunt shrieked, and seizing the clergyman’s arm, pointed—
“Look! Pickled babies—one, two, three! And bones! And a fish-kettle! It is all plain. He kills them, and boils them down for his experiments, and by an accident he forgot to empty his larder—his larder! hoo-hoo!—before he went!”
She broke into hysteric laughter and gaspings. Miss Robin, whinnying, tottered quite close up to the young man, who stood shivering and speechless.
“What can we do to save him?” she whimpered. “Mr. Prior, say something!”
Thus urged, the unhappy young man strove to press his brain into a focus with his hand, and to rally himself to what, he felt, was the supreme occasion of his life. The appealing eyes and parted lips so close to his would have intoxicated a saint, much more a pirate.
“We must warn him—agony column—from returning,” he ejaculated, reeling. “Cryptic address—has he any distinguishing mark?”
“Yes,” she said, with frantic eagerness; “he has a large mole at the root of his nose.”
“Very well,” he said—“something of this sort: ‘Nose, with large mole at root of. All discovered. Don’t return!’ ”